Corstorphine Hill, SoSOL

ESOC Event in the South of Scotland Orienteering League (SoSOL)

Sun 23rd Feb 2020

Type of event: Regional
Near: City of Edinburgh

Provisional results for the SOSOL event at Corstorphine hill are here.

Winsplits are here.

PLANNER’S COMMENTS: Alison Cunningham writes - Planning the courses on Corstorphine Hill was fun and I hope you all enjoyed the Hill nearly as much as I do. I tried to keep you in the nicest bits but inevitably there had to be slippy, hilly and brambly parts, although the weather and the paths were about the best I have seen in recent weeks! What fun I had creating a path through the brambles in a blizzard and sliding down the slopes backwards during storm Ciara! As much as I loved the planning I found the computer techie bit much more difficult and my huge thanks to Martin for all his help and patience in creating such a pretty map which was printed on time! Although slightly embarrassed by the enormous size of the map and equally enormous size of the control circles I only heard favourable comments about the clarity of this - many thanks to those who didn’t have a moan!

My apologies to the wee ones on the white course who spent most of their course in the full force of the cold Westerly breeze and to those working on the start which also had little shelter. I was interested to hear all the different course route choices and even some I hadn’t thought of - apparently the mid-green vegetation wasn’t too bad to get through even if it looked pretty awful to me; although some will fight through anything to avoid losing height! I was sad that nobody I had spoken to had spotted the wallabies from the crag on LG/Bl/Br courses but was delighted by the many really favourable comments - there are some lovely wooded areas on the map at this time of year. All participants were accounted for at the end, which is always a good thing, although to the 3 who finished after some considerable time on the LG course - don’t assume No 7 will be in the same place at the CATI event on the 14th March!

Many thanks to Anne for hassle free and beautiful organisation and for a really lovely string course in an area of the woods that I have never ventured into and was really pretty. And many thanks to Martin and Ken for helping put out the controls and to Helena, Hanne, Dave, Crawford, Sally, Katy, Alastair and Peter for collecting controls in. Special thanks of course to Ken for checking my courses and keeping my right throughout.

While I was putting the controls out I realised just how much I love seeing a control kite sited in the woods and as I sat and watched everyone dashing about around me was reminded what a great sport for all orienteering is.

Thanks for coming!

Broxburn Urban Race, SOUL

Urban event in the 2020 Scottish Orienteering Urban League (SOUL)

Sun 02nd Feb 2020

Type of event: Regional
Near: Broxburn

ORGANISER’S COMMENTS from Jayne MacGregor: It was very wet in Broxburn this morning so a special mention to the helpers who had early shift, but thanks to every ESOC member who helped. It seems the poor weather this morning didn’t put off those who hadn’t entered and we had a bumper crop of EODs.

The early arrivals at the Event Centre had to contend with an unexpected parade by the local ATC (RAF Air Cadets) unit and the resulting rolling traffic light closure by the police escort.

One item of Lost Property - Craghoppers dark grey fleece size M. Text 07979901151 to claim

CONTROLLER’S COMMENTS from Blair Young, TINTO: Always a pleasure to be involved with a well planned and organised event which is exactly what ESOC provided for an enthusiastic but disappointingly low number of competitors.
I have to admit that Broxburn was a revelation to me as, having only passed through on a very few occasions, I didn’t expect it to provide such variety and route options.
These were optimised by Katy’s excellent planning which I am glad to say was well received by everyone.
The main talking point seemed to be the route choice around Broxburn Academy made all the more difficult, at least initially, by the fact that we were unable to draw a line between the two controls due to the campus being out of bounds. The measured distance of the leg only varied by about 10m between the two routes, so as long as you made your decision quickly there was little difference.

Jayne took over the Organising at short notice but she did a great job leading the very experienced and efficient ESOC team, many of whom remained cheery despite the often inclement weather, particularly early on. Well done to everyone who helped.

Cammo Estate

ESOC local event in Edinburgh and the Lothians

Sat 18th Jan 2020

Type of event: Local
Near: Edinburgh

Provisional results are here All runners who were affected by the missing controls have been sorted, and the technical issues have been cleared up.

Many people will know about some timing boxes being stolen/removed from controls during the event. As you might imagine, this causes problems for our timing gurus as well as a significant financial loss to ESOC.

Image of the Davidson’s Mains Park & Royal High School map

Royal High School and Davidson’s Mains Park

ESOC local event in Edinburgh and the Lothians

Sat 16th Nov 2019

Type of event: Local
Near: City of Edinburgh

Results are here

Winsplits are here

ORGANISER'S COMMENTS: This is a good place for a dark November afternoon. The rain held off and there was a lovely atmosphere inside the Sports Hub; though a bit chaotic at peak times. It was good to see three groups of relative beginners from Cubs, Boys Brigade and Mary Erskine School; this is an ideal area to gain confidence on White and Yellow courses. The new concept of a Short White course was much remarked on, and we'll try this again at the next suitable event. The Light Green had an ingenious route choice leg; and everyone enjoyed the good visibilty through the bare trees.
Thank you to everyone who came, everyone who worked hard to make it happen, David McPhillips for his Bake Sale in aid of "Habitat for Humanity" and Serge at The Hub for providing a warm and welcoming venue.
Next event is at Cammo on 18th January 2020. See you there......
Janet Clark Organiser 0131 225 7771

Lost property; One nice black "Rab" thermal glove

An area especially suitable for newcomers and beginners and something will also be provided for experienced orienteers. Added Extra - coaching available at 1pm for beginners and those needing a bit of encouragement.

Bonaly Park

ESOC local event in Edinburgh and the Lothians

Sat 19th Oct 2019

Type of event: Local
Near: Edinburgh

The results are here. Winsplits are here. The 'surprise' course generated a few small surprises with some people punching the wrong control, which added a penalty to their time. Interestingly, the mistakes were scattered over a number of controls. One control that caught out more than one person was the small crag (9) facing north and looking over the reservoir. Very easy there to get to the wrong crag (as three people did).

ORGANISER's COMMENTS: Janet Clark writes - There were several surprises today! The first was that, despite dire weather forecasts and torrential rain all night, it was actually quite a nice day and we didn't get wet at all (except underfoot).   Being able to pitch the tent over a ready-made solid flat table was a welcome surprise. The "Surprise" Green Course was very popular; with no control codes on the map it depended on accurate navigation to avoid penalties; and despite a few wobbles almost everyone managed to get it right. Next surprise was the number of people who came back and did a second course; great that they enjoyed it so much. Seeing the Alpacac Walk go past wasn't really a surprise, as they often do, but this was lovely just the same.
So, all in all a very successful afternoon.
Please come to another event soon.   Each is surprisingly different but all are fun.
Janet Clark     Organiser     0131 225 7771

This area is great for orienteering at all skill levels. Truly something for everyone.

North Pentland Hills

SOL 5, incorporating VHI Individual Event

Sun 22nd Sep 2019

Type of event: National
Near: Edinburgh

Winsplits are here

VHI results are here

Summary of VHI Points is here

SOL results are here

Routegadget is here

LOST PROPERTY: Contact Fiona Findlay by email to: If you think you left anything behind and it is not listed here, please contact Fiona as she may be still be able to help.
1 Addict blue sweatshirt, S
2 pairs of inov8 mudclaw, sizes UK 6 and 6.5

VHI Weekend Coordinator's Comments: Margaret Dalgleish writes - A huge thank you to everyone concerned with putting on the SOL and VHI Individual event at North Pentland Hills on Sunday. It takes a big team of people to put on an event which has starts running from 10am until 1.30pm. ESOC pulled this off magnificently. Special thanks to Organiser Fiona Findlay, Planner Richard Oxlade and Controller Graeme Ackland and his support network of Oleg and Scott. Thanks to Keith Brown and Judy Bell for setting up the computing and working out the results whilst still under pressure from other jobs.

Thanks too to the teams from the home countries who made the sometimes very long journey to take part in the Veteran Home Internationals this year. The accommodation was in Broomlee Centre in West Linton. A lovely setting next to the Pentland Hills. Thanks to Anne Hickling for coordinating all issues relating to accommodation.

CONTROLLER'S COMMENTS: Graeme Ackland writes - The North Pentlands is not the most technical area in Scotland, but its proximity to Edinburgh makes it very convenient. Producing a worthy international course was a fun challenge for the team, and I feel we did well. Its a bit disappointing that due to tight timescales and mapper illness we weren't able to use the event to get the map into the kind of shape we would have liked, but I think the courses were ultimately fair and the routechoices at least were top class.

At one stage it became obvious that I wasn't physically capable of doing th econtrolling job, so many thanks to Scott Fraser and Oleg Chepelin (INT) who did all the hard miles to ensure everything got checked. I was confident they'd be in he right place. Which they were, although in some places the map was so bad it wasn't possible to be clear on approach from every direction and for fairness we had to make the flags a little more visible than usual.
Richard did a superb job on the planning, leaving me just some minimal input to the course designs - I think short blue is the only one I made serious improvements, and that was the difficult "shortest course going up the hill". We discussed at length having a very long leg even on green, but eventually figured that a 2km leg would be too dominant in determining their results, so went for a more routine low-level "find the flags" option. Similarly, great work went into setting out the crossing points and hanging the flags.
Ali Masson won the Black in 71, a tad longer than the 67 target. Other course lengths now scale from there, using the same percentages as wehn M@! was a 90 minute course. So the VHI winning times are typically in the mid-40s - much shorter than they used to be and I feel too short for an International "long" course, but until someone changes them black, them's the rules.

CompassPoint Scottish Orienteering League (SOL) 5 incorporating Veteran Home International Individual race.